A diary, about, well, my writing Daily Kos diaries… with today’s title derived from this.
Some of you remember back sometime after the dinosaurs walked the earth and Al Gore actually didn’t say he invented the Internet when Daily Kos didn’t have a googolplex of posts submitted by people not on the paid staff (aka community members) what they wrote was called by several names. Wiki tells us that beginning in 2003 that Daily Kos….
expanded to a community, Kos appointed four or five "guest bloggers" (also called "front page diarists," "contributing editors," "front-pagers," or simply "FPers") who were selected from the community and tasked with regular contributions on the front page (without needing to have their articles recommended or promoted).
The definition that stuck was diarist, and of course a diarist writes diaries. The term ended up being applied to everything posted by community members.
When I started posting my first on March 16, 2016 my diary, “Too bad the Republicans can’t nominate the Trumpinator” was only 260 words and could have been a “Just Sayn’” diary. Little did I suspect it would be the first of 1414 posts, not counting this diary.
I learned quite quickly that what I would generally call an article, story, or essay was often referred to as a diary in the comments. The term is still used on our profile pages:
My notion of what a diary is goes along with the usual definition where someone writes a kind of journal jotting down their personal thoughts and documents the activities of their day. There are notable works of non-fiction like “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank to fictional stories like “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” which has shaped people’s conception of what a diary is. Lots of children, especially teenagers keep diaries. Journaling has become a recommended way of helping people deal with tough times including coping with Covid isolation. 1, 2, 3, 4
You can sometimes tell how long someone has been a Daily Kos aficionado if they refer to posts by community members as diaries. You can also tell if they are Kos connoisseurs if they use the term Kossack (or is it Kosack?) to refer to other regulars
I thought the that the term diary as I defined it only applied to a very few pieces which I posted on Daily Kos. Here’s a recent one I would call a diary because it has so much about me in it: You want to hug your family, but what other things will you do two weeks after your final shot? I actually included the word diary in the title of this one: DIARY: Vaccine No. 2 day I didn't think about Trump, then I read about the gun and God loving killer.
Then about two weeks ago I realized I was actually starting to write diaries.
On April 3rd I figured I’d preface these with “Just Sayn’” and there you have it.
For better or worse, I’m writing diaries.
I’m not saying I won’t write long and ponderous expositions about subjects like I’ve sometimes done in the past, especially about psychology, but because these “Just Sayn’” diaries are such more fun to write (and I enjoy making illustrations like I did yesterday) I have a feeling that as long as a few of you like my ephemeral ramblings about what I’m thinking about on some days I’ll keep them coming.